12 February 2015

Its Our County Deputy party leader Liz Harvey is attending the Council of Europe Monitoring Committee meeting in Paris.

It is the largest attendance at the committee meeting with more than 80 delegates present. with some contentious issues to be discussed.

The committee monitors the health of democracy across 47 member states of the Council of Europe. The committee was discussing follow-up reports from monitoring visits in Georgia, Moldova and Armenia. Reports on monitoring activity on the Slovak Republic and in France.

The Slovak Republic did not agree with a number of the recommendations made by rapporteurs for their monitoring visits either. Hungarian representatives were also upset about cross-border issues, particularly w.r.t. movement (or not) of recent refugees.

Liz commented that “Compliance with the European Charter of Local Self-government will be reviewed in the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey and Italy and election observations in Ukraine and Albania will be reviewed”.

Explanations on the complexity of local government in Italy were received. They seem to be having some similar local area border redrawing issues to France at the regional level.

Liz comments “The situation in Azerbaijan and local/regional human rights will be examined.”

Needless to say the Russian delegation is at full complement and is expected to take an ‘active’ part in the meeting.